Are You are Surrounded by Idiots? Unfortunately, You Might be the Idiot...

Does it feel like you are surrounded by idiots?  How is it possible for so many people to be confident in their abilities and be so incapable?

Every year on  American Idol they show case confident people that can't sing to save their lives that seriously think they can sing. Every wonder how so many people could be deluded about their ability to sing?

On the flip side, some of the best singers on the show clearly lack confidence in their abilities.


A 2009 study¹ shows that the most incompetent people actually believe that they are above average.

People that are ignorant that are unskilled or incompetent tend to be very confident of their abilities.

In fact everyone thinks they are at the 60% level or better, in particular, every person in the bottom 50% think that they are at least at that level, i.e. above average.

So we believe that we are above average sometimes, whether this is true or not.

Interestingly enough people in the top quartile (i.e. the competent ones) think that they are at a lower level than they really are. They believe that other's are more skilled than they really are and so self-evaluate themselves lower.

If you confident that you are above average at something, what if you are really bad at it?

You might assume that observing others would prevent you from having an overblown sense of competence. Shockingly, this is not the case.  When incompetent people observe others, even those better than themselves, they tend to have a higher opinion of themselves.

So even if you are bad at something, you won't figure it out by looking at other people.

The only people who self-evaluate correctly after seeing other people are the competent people, who correctly self-assess that they are better than other people.

Only under one circumstance were incompetent people able to realize their incompetence. When given training on to do things, the bottom quartile revised their opinions of themselves down to about 30%. This was still much higher than their average actual results (12%), but at least they realized that they were below average.

If you really want to know if you are above average at something then you must get training from experts.

In North America, there is a strong belief that we are all intelligent and that training is not necessary. This belief that we don't need to be trained is deadly and consequently it means that there are many pretenders out there.

So be careful before assuming that confidence = competence.

Also, you may want to be careful of any subject which you have not put much effort into but are confident that you are competent.

Odds are there is something that you think that you are good at but it may turn out that you are the idiot!

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As Mark Twain once said (ironically, of course):

All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.

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References

¹ Kruger, Justin and Dunning, David. Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments, Psychology, 2009, 1, p.30-46.

Incompetent people hate transparency

When you work with people that are less than competent, it is very hard to get definitive proof that they are doing a poor job.

Remember that most people think they are above average at their jobs (see this).

If  there is definitive proof that they can't do their job then you are dealing with a situation where political will keeps them in power.

That is because people that are less than competent and know that they are incompetent, understand that the primary way that they will keep their jobs is through:

• Making it difficult to measure what they are doing
• Plausible deniability when things are poorly done
• Being friends with people with political power

With  few exceptions, incompetence is simply the result of ignorance.  Effort by the unskilled person together with proper training and mentoring is generally all it takes to become competent.  Some people recognize this and make an effort to become competent.

Competence simply requires effort and training.

Sometimes the lack of proper measurement can have people thinking that they are doing a good job when they are not.  There are many office jobs that are difficult to measure properly and where the primary feedback about your work comes from other people.  This is very dangerous because we all have biases and getting unbiased feedback from a manager or co-worker is next to impossible.

It is difficult to find someone who is incompetent at everything, although I'm sure these people exist.  Rather, what happens is that competent people end up in jobs where they are less than competent, e.g. through promotion and seniority.

Because our desires are essentially infinite, people gravitate towards the highest paying job that they feel that they can hold down.  Unfortunately, that means that people will try to get into jobs that they don't have competence for simply because they want the salary associated wih that job.

We all have  desires and so we seek higher paying jobs.

If someone desires a greater salary than their skill level then they are unlikely to give it up when they discover that they have trouble doing the job.  The only way to keep that job is to make sure that other people can't get definitive feedback that they can't do the job.

When there are unbiased and independent ways to measure the quality of performance then incompetent people are exposed.  The only way for an incompetent person to thrive in an environment is for it to be difficult to measure anything that they do.  If they miss a commitment or work is done in an inadequate fashion then they will have a plausible reason why this is so.

Competent people do not make excuses for poorly done work

Incompetent people do not think of themselves as incompetent.  They feel that they have the same right to things that everyone else does and will often push issues with their performance onto other people.  Another issue is that competent people dislike incompetent people and tend to get very angry.  However, when competent people get angry the incompetent person only sees the anger and not what you are angry about. Being angry with an incompetent person is what enables them to use management and other people's opinions against you.

Exposing Incompetent People

The method of exposing incompetent people is simple, however, it will not apply to every situation.  In particular, do not try to expose an incompetent person if they are politically better connected than you are; all that will happen is that you will lose your job.

You need to be able to do the following:

1. Introduce transparency and unbiased measures
2. Offer training to the incompetent person
3. Don't be angry at the incompetent person
4. Do not talk poorly about the incompetent person

By introducing unbiased measures you enable transparency which then shines a light into what is going on. Unbiased measurement will make it clear in an independent way that that person is unable to do their job.

Offer to train the incompetent person.  You would be surprised how often people have no idea that they are doing a bad job.  Don't assume that they know, show them the results of the unbiased measures and indicate what the problem is.  Ignorant people will generally be surprised and try to do something about it; incompetent people will not.

Don't be angry at the incompetent person -- and this is very important.  When you are angry it affects your entire being and will manifest in all your interactions.  In particular, management will see the conflict between you and the incompetent person as a personality conflict and you will become as much of a problem as the incompetent person.

Do not talk poorly about the incompetent person, not to any one.  This will become office gossip and will also be a one way ticket to being labeled as trouble.  Do not mention this to people that you are friendly with or trust in the office, they probably already know and do not want to hear it.

Conclusion

We have all had to work with people that are less than competent.  Where possible by the introduction of transparency through unbiased measurement and by not getting angry and gossiping you can eventually expose the problem.

The other side of the coin is that you should be aware of your own levels of competence.  If you find that you are less than transparent in many of the things that you are doing then you might need to take a hard look at yourself and then get some training.  We should all be continually looking at ourselves in the mirror and working to improve ourselves.

The Illusion of Control

We like to believe that we are in control of our destiny, but this is only an illusion. The illusion of control exists only when you restrict your attention to the few things that you can influence.

Trying to get control of everything will lead you to lose control, but more importantly, lose time and the ability to appreciate life.

What you control is small compared to what you can't control

You can't control when it rains, you can't control the way other people drive, and you can't control if a downturn in the economy wipes out your company or personal wealth.  As much as you try, you really only influence things -- you do not control them.

We confuse the fact that we can influence a few things with the notion that we can control everything.

For example, we like to believe that we are in control of our bodies, but are we?  People that learn to control some aspect of their bodies (athletes, ballet dancers, martial artists, contortionists) spend about 5 years with full time training to develop that level of control.  B

ut learning precise control of the body does not translate into other kinds of body control, i.e. ballerinas can't break boards and martial artists can't do swan lake.

The average person thinks he controls his body because of restricting attention to day to day activities. Most of our day to day activities do not require much in the way of body control.

The easiest way to see that we don't control our bodies is to expand our vision to include old age.  Old age makes us lose control of different body processes regardless of how much control that you believe that you had in your youth.  It may be different for each person, but we lose sharpness in our vision, clarity in our hearing, and control over our limbs.

We can filter out images of old people with walkers or electric wheel chairs to give ourself the illusion that we are in control, but the reality is that we are not.


You may influence your body, but you do not control it.

People seek control to avoid pain and get what they want.  There is no doubt that through education and skill building you can do this to some extent.  But when the pursuit of control dominates your ability to appreciate the world you can easily lose years of your life without realizing it.

Devoting your energy to getting control of things is likely to cause you to lose control.  Some people like getting directions, but very few people like to be controlled.  Try to control all the people around you and you will lose them.

Seeking to control people is the fastest way to lose them 

Parents who try to control their children will often lose them and wonder what happened.  It only takes one half of a couple to try to control the other person before the relationship becomes doomed to failure.  The irony is that the controlling person will often assume that the relationship failed because they were not controlling enough!

As Stephen Covey suggests, every relationship has a value, just like a bank account.  Do something for the other person and the value of the account goes up.

When you attempt to control other people you are making a withdrawal from that account, and continual attempts to control someone else will bankrupt that account.

Remember, that others can see constant suggestions as a sign that you are trying to control them.  Instead wait for people to ask your opinion rather than just volunteering it all the time.  It does not matter whether you are able to see ways in which other people can improve their lives, worry about your life -- it is up to them to work on theirs.

The way to a happy and productive life is to understand the illusion of control and to move to a position of wanting to influence others but accepting and being happy if that does not happen.

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